Scaled-Back Links

Is golf on the decline in popularity?

Debatable. But, as evidence, you may have heard Dick’s Sporting Goods recently let go of the full-time PGA professionals it had hired to consult customers in its more than 560 stores throughout the country.

Consider this more evidence: Fayetteville-based Lindsey Management Co., the massive property management and multifamily housing operation founded in 1985 by real estate magnate Jim Lindsey, received approval in late July from the Lawrence-Douglas County planning commission for a 900-unit apartment complex on a 78-acre site in Lawrence, Kansas.

According to an online report in the Lawrence-Journal World, the project was originally to be built around a nine-hole golf course, an amenity of most Lindsey developments.

The proposal submitted to planning commissioners, though, dropped the golf course from the plans, and the reason was pretty forthright.

“What we’re learning more and more about golf courses is that, unfortunately for us, interest in golf is declining,” Kim Fugitt, a Fayetteville architect and Lindsey Management executive told the LJW. “It takes a long time to play, and it’s expensive.”

Lindsey Management, which has 42 golf course/apartment communities in its portfolio, hasn’t opened a new golf course in three years because of the sluggish economy.